Posted by toddleduc on 1/8/2013 1:08:00 AM (view original):I see 16 sign-ups & 25 categories... I like the concept- I'm confused but I'll play, lol. Do I pick one of the 25 categories listed or create my own?

Thanks ! -td

Thank you for your interest, toddleduc, but we decided a while back to decrease the league size from 24 to 16. We sputtered once we hit 16 owners and decided to just continue with the league as is. I will keep you posted if we decide to do another version of this league.

Not sure if somebody pointed this out, but the "21st century rookie of the year" category is missing the 2012 ROY's. (I guess admin hasn't input those yet.) I guess there may be other award categories missing 2012 players (I haven't checked).

What is the ruling on this? Should they be included or not? And if not, what if they add those awards during our drafts?

You know, I really like the idea of this theme, but next time you run this, I would add a new rule. I think you need to add a mechanism for vetoing / disallowing some of the categories.

Without singling anybody out, there are some really stupid, pointless categories of players that everybody will bid $1-$2 on. It's a waste of time, really. You might as well have had just 18-20 categories and let people fill out their roster with 200K scrubs... it's basically the same thing, except we're using $1M - $4M scrubs.

The idea of this theme is to make people have tough decisions in how they allocate their money. Every category should have at least some usable players. Adding a stupid category of players that nobody cares really dumbs down the concept.

Posted by schwarze on 1/8/2013 10:16:00 AM (view original):Not sure if somebody pointed this out, but the "21st century rookie of the year" category is missing the 2012 ROY's. (I guess admin hasn't input those yet.) I guess there may be other award categories missing 2012 players (I haven't checked).

What is the ruling on this? Should they be included or not? And if not, what if they add those awards during our drafts?

2012 ROY's don't show up in the search, so they are out. It hurts to leave Mike Trout and Bryce Harper out of this league, but rules are rules.

Posted by schwarze on 1/8/2013 10:38:00 AM (view original):You know, I really like the idea of this theme, but next time you run this, I would add a new rule. I think you need to add a mechanism for vetoing / disallowing some of the categories.

Without singling anybody out, there are some really stupid, pointless categories of players that everybody will bid $1-$2 on. It's a waste of time, really. You might as well have had just 18-20 categories and let people fill out their roster with 200K scrubs... it's basically the same thing, except we're using $1M - $4M scrubs.

The idea of this theme is to make people have tough decisions in how they allocate their money. Every category should have at least some usable players. Adding a stupid category of players that nobody cares really dumbs down the concept.

But, I like the concept commish...

I think at the beginning it was hard to tell where this league was going in terms of overall quality of the talent pool. This is why you see some of the less desirable categories come earlier on in the signup sheet. IMO I would like to see categories that have a very notable gradation in quality from the best to the worst player; thus forcing owners to think really hard about how they want to allocate their money.

But I don't think it's fair to pile on certain owners when the whole point of the league is that they everyone gets to make their own choices. If each owner is happy with the category they came up with, then so be it.

I didn't mention any names... in fact, I didn't even look to see who nominated each of the categories. When the bids get revealed, and some categories have a cumulative bid of under $20, it will be apparent which categories were "pointless".

But you are right flyingman... if those owners wanted these categories included, it was within their right... All I am saying is that next time, make some rule to make all 25 categories mean something..

And for the record, I wish I could have a re-do with the category I chose (Staff Aces). I included too many players. I think the best categories are where there are a mixture of great, medium and poor players and that the total number of players is close to the minimum allowable.

Posted by schwarze on 1/8/2013 11:54:00 AM (view original):And for the record, I wish I could have a re-do with the category I chose (Staff Aces). I included too many players. I think the best categories are where there are a mixture of great, medium and poor players and that the total number of players is close to the minimum allowable.

I agree wholeheartedly with the last sentence of this statement - although I think it doesn't have to include all three. Great to mediocre or decent to pathetic would be a good range as well.

Depending on how the remainder of this league goes, I would be interested in trying this idea out again--on the condition that I get some help setting everything up. I should have anticipated this, but it ended up being a lot more work than I expected.

Some rule changes I would consider:

-Lowering the maximum number of players per category (maybe setting the cap at 30 for a 24-team league or 20 for a 16-team league).
-Allowing owners to change their draft category at any point in signup process. Obviously now that we are 5 days from starting that will be a no-go now.

And while I would like all the categories to have a noticeable gradation in quality from top to bottom, I wouldn't want to enforce any rules that require owners to do that, as I think it works against the spirit of the league.

I have definitely enjoyed this process and get what schwarze is saying. If we can somehow get a similar version of this league to run again (and hopefully fill up), then I would certainly change the way I picked my categories.

I'm not complaining about it, because it definitely had to be done...but when we switched from 24 teams to just 16, it changed how I looked at each category. Some categories have like 10 studs, then 6 good, and maybe 4 serviceable fillers. This would have been interesting if we still had 24 teams, since 4 teams would have had crap and another 4 would have had fill-in type of guys. But with 16 teams, everyone gets someone that is very useful.